Game made during the Berlin Mini Game Jam A Maze Edition, April 2019. One of the themes was “The Pasta is out of control!”. We had the idea of making a spaghetti western themed game, in an obvious pun. The story does not take place in the Gunfu Deadlands universe. Instead it’s a modern time setting, but on another side of the Mississippi where the wild west still exists and totally looks like in that famous film genre.

My friend Tommy Friese came up with the concept and made some nice music to play in the background for atmosphere. Myself, I wrote some silly story in Twine.

Usually at the Berlin Mini Game Jam we select not one, but three themes. The idea is that the themes should serve as inspiration, and some participants might not be very inspired by the most voted theme. When that happens, they have two more themes to choose from. Sometimes, the inspiration comes from trying to combine all three themes into one… “for maximum effect!”. And if they don’t like any of the themes, they can just “ignore them and do something completely different”. These are our two recurring jokes.

Our team, with Galina illustrating, and me writing some words on Twine, took inspiration from Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film “Battleship Potemkin” and decided to tell the glorious story of another battleship: the цветок ромашка (Daisy Flower). The title of the game is “The Quest of the Daisy Flower“.

Important note: every passage has text and links. If you don’t see them, scroll down.

( Clarification about the third theme: one of the jammers, Saskia, had her birthday that day and brought cookies for everyone. We were so happy that her birthday wishes made it into the top-3 voted themes of the jam. )

It is a story, written in Twine, about a scientist that one day divides by zero and gets sent to a fantasy land inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. His mission, is to find the way back home. The delightful sketches that illustrate each passage were drawn by Marthe Rosenow. The concept of the story was also hers. The texts were written by me.

At this point, the story (text) is finished. The sketches for 2/3 of the game are also there. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to complete 100% of the sketches. My fault: I got carried away and wrote a lot of text, too much for the time limit that we had.

Note: every passage has links to continue at the bottom. Depending on your browser resolution, you might not see it at first. If so, please scroll down or use the zoom function of the browser to make everything smaller, so that it fits.

One of the themes of the November Mini Game Jam was “Don’t press that button”. In the game we made, you are Captain Carrotocket, and your mission is to cross the Cabbage Belts with your beloved spaceship: The Carrotocket Z.

With the cursor keys you control your robotic hand. You have to find the blinking button that controls the fuel dosage of the Carrotocket Z, and press it using the space bar. Be careful not to press the button that shall not be pressed. You will know it when you see it.

The game Michael and me made during the September 2017 Berlin Mini Game Jam. Going in the direction “children-friendly”. One of the themes was “masks”, so we made a game where there is a bunch of cats frolicking around while wearing masks. You can move the spotlight with your mouse and have to find a particular cat, the picture of which you can see in the top-left corner of the screen.

This game prototype was made at the July 2017 Berlin Mini Game Jam. Patricia wrote the music, Michael made the graphics, and I hacked some code in Löve2D. We formed the team “The Thin Theme Team”.

The idea is to represent an alien city. In this alien planet, buildings grow like plants. Your job is to move the clouds so that the rain is distributed and the city develops. It is an open ended game with no ending.

This is a game we made at the October 2016 Berlin Mini Game Jam. The theme was “microorganisms”. It’s a game inspired in Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Bobble. You command a little mouse that is trying to combat a micro-organism infestation in the fridge, by shooting little capsules like in the classic Doctor Mario. These micro-organisms merge with each other by color, forming bigger and bigger rectangles. Using the special “rainbow” capsule, you can pop them out. Bigger rectangles yield higher scores, and combos also count. The goal of the game is to survive as long as you can while collecting more and more points.

The graphics were made by Michael Hussinger, code by myself. The game has no sound or music because… laziness on my part (I was the one supposed to do that). As usual, made in Löve2D. Available at Google Play.

About

My name is Christiaan Janssen. Dutch by birth, raised in Barcelona, and currently living in Berlin. This blog is about the games I make in my free time, just for the fun of it.

All games are free software under the GPL 3.0 License unless explicitly stated otherwise. You are free to copy, share, and modify them. All assets (graphics and audio) under Creative Commons V3.0 BY-SA, unless explicitly stated otherwise.